Nuclear agency worries Iran trying to make bomb

IRAN

Borzou Daragahi and Julia Damianova, Los Angeles Times

Published 4:00 am, Friday, February 19, 2010

The United Nations' nuclear watchdog for the first time Thursday explicitly voiced concern that Iran is trying to make a nuclear bomb, amid signs of fraying relations between the agency's inspectors and authorities in the Islamic Republic.

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran last week produced its first batch of 20 percent enriched uranium, based on scientific data it was given by Iranians who plan to use the more highly purified nuclear fuel for an ailing Tehran medical reactor.

The IAEA also said it has not yet resolved questions about documents that suggest that Iran was engaged in past experiments consistent with a clandestine nuclear program. Iran has called the documents forgeries.

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"The information available to the agency ... raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile," the report said.

Iran ignored such language and said the report, the first under new IAEA chief Yukiya Amano, affirmed the civilian nature of its nuclear program.

"The new director-general of the IAEA has confirmed that Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful and that there are no deviations in material or activities toward military purposes," Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's envoy to the agency, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

U.S. officials said the report was in line with Obama administration concerns over Iran's nuclear activities.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the report continues to demonstrate "the failure of the Iranian government to live up to its international obligations."

Iran is locked in a confrontation with the West over its nuclear program, which it insists is wholly for peaceful purposes. The United States and its allies strongly suspect that Iran's program is aimed at creating a nuclear weapon.

Iran's current 3.5 percent enriched uranium can fuel a power reactor, while rates of 60 percent purity can serve as fissile material for a nuclear bomb. Earlier, Western officials had doubted Iran's claims that it had produced the more highly refined uranium but warned that such a step by Iran would escalate tensions. The West says Iranians spurned a United Nations-backed offer to further enrich uranium for its Tehran reactor abroad.

The report said Iran had produced about 4,550 pounds of low-enriched uranium so far, which experts say is almost enough to produce the highly enriched uranium necessary for two nuclear bombs.

On Sunday, Iran moved almost all of its enriched uranium to the facility producing the 20 percent uranium, raising suspicions that it might plan to convert far more of its stockpile into higher grade material than necessary for the Tehran medical reactor.